Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal is the gripping novel which is transforming management thinking throughout the Western world. The author has been described by Fortune as a 'guru to industry' and by Businessweek as a 'genius'. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors.

Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try and improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a colleague from student days - Jonah - to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done.

The story of Alex's fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC) developed by Eli Goldratt. Eliyahu M. Goldratt is an internationally recognized leader in the development of new business management concepts and systems, and acts as an educator to many of the world's corporations. The 20th anniversary edition includes a series of detailed case study interviews by David Whitford, Editor at Large, Fortune Small Business, which explore how organizations around the world have been transformed by Eli Goldratt's ideas.

Special offers and product promotions

Editorial Reviews

Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal is the gripping novel which is transforming management thinking throughout the Western world. The author has been described by Fortune as a 'guru to industry' and by Businessweek as a 'genius'. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors.

Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try and improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a colleague from student days - Jonah - to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done.

The story of Alex's fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC) developed by Eli Goldratt. Eliyahu M. Goldratt is an internationally recognized leader in the development of new business management concepts and systems, and acts as an educator to many of the world's corporations. The 20th anniversary edition includes a series of detailed case study interviews by David Whitford, Editor at Large, Fortune Small Business, which explore how organizations around the world have been transformed by Eli Goldratt's ideas.

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

I am reading this having already read Gene Kim's "The Phoenix Project." As you might expect, I am in IT - so why read this? In short, I think the novel does a fantastic job of introducing the down-sides of "Taylorist" management approaches, even in manufacturing, which is what Taylorism was developed for in the first place. By presenting the material in the form of a novel with a clear narrative path, it presents the basic ideas and some of their most important implications in an easily-digested and enjoyable way. You can then go on and read some of the excellent nonfiction literature on Lean that is targeted at your type of business and start with a intuition about where things can go, making that literature easier to digest and understand. (As an example, I read Reinertson's excellent "Principles of Product Development Flow" before reading this. I understood in an "I can apply these ideas" way about 30% of the work, and kinda-sorta got the rest. AFTER reading this book and seeing a bigger picture, much more of his theory makes sense to me in a way that I can actually use it now.)

The book has a few dings against it - mostly simply that it is dated. The deteriorating relationship with his stay-at-home wife is realistic for the time in which the book was written - but it smacks of 1986 now. (This from a guy who got married in 1986...) While it is a bit of a distraction, it does help the book make the point that improving things at work in the right way can and does improve people's outside-of-work lives in very real ways. You will not get that empathetic viewpoint from the nonfiction literature on the subject, so the inclusion is still a strength - it is just that the content has not aged all that well.

On the positive side, it swings into other ideas too. The discussion of how traditional accounting rules and consequential financial controls can create a set of counterproductive incentives is telling, and presages by a couple of decades the work being done now in the Beyond Budgeting movement. So it is a great jumping-off point for that too.

Both this book and "The Phoenix Project" are pretty easy reads. If you gun through both over a weekend or two you will be able to see how the principles of Lean developed in manufacturing can be applied to other kinds of work.

I guess I’ll start by saying that I actually really enjoyed this book. I was forced to read it out of my own free will but I’m glad that I was because there are some good lessons to learn from The Goal. Originally, I thought that the Theory of Constraints would be presented in a boring, technical way but it’s actually told in the form of a story. The story is basically about a plant manager, named Alex Rogo, whose plant is struggling to survive. Upper management gives Rogo three months to turn things around and he does by getting advice from his old college professor who happens to be studying about the science of organizations. Ultimately, Rogo learns that the goal of any company is to make money (which I guessed by the way) and he simplifies that goal by defining three parameters (throughput, inventory, and operating expenses), which he uses to make decision about the plant’s operations.

The novel is easy to read and the examples that are given make the technical aspects of the book understandable, especially the part where Rogo realizes how bottlenecks work when he takes his son on the boy scout trip.

Something else I should mention is that throughout the novel, you get some insight into Rogo’s personal life and the problems he’s having at home with his wife because of how busy he is at work. At first I thought that whole thing would detract from the book but by the end you come to realize that our work lives and our personal life are closely intertwined and one will always affect the other so it’s important to try to find that balance between your personal life and your life at work.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is a business novel and is a great book to read to prepare for industry people. As an industrial engineering major student, I really enjoyed when I was reading. This book tells a story, which is really easy to understand. The main character for this book is Alex Rogo, who is the plant manager for UniCo Manufacturing. He was told that he only has three months to run this plant to a good state by Bill Peach, a company executive. Alex Rogo met his college physicist professor, Jonah, in the airport. Jonah is an expert on manufacturing management. He tried to help Alex Rogo to solve plant problems with a lot phone call meetings. As a reader and an engineering student, I understand Alex Rogo really wants to keep this company for sake of many employers and his family. Because he knew that his wife just new to this town, he doesn’t want to her to move again, and plus he grew up in this old town, Bearington.Because Alex Rogo has spent a lot of time to solve plant problems, he was too busy to spend time with his family. Therefore, his marriage got trouble as well. His wife, Julie, feels lonely and boring living in this old town, and she left her family. I think The Goal is a great book that can be used in management colleges to teach students about the importance of strategic capacity planning and constraint management.The book involves some aspects in a manufacturing process. In the book The Goal, Jonah teaches Alex Rogo by using the Socratic method. All the time, when Alex asks for help from Jonah, Jonah would never give him answer directly; instead, Jonah poses a question to him, which makes him to think and solve problems. Eventually, Alex finds out the Socratic method to solve his marital problem and proposes a solution to solve his plant problem

This is one of the best business books I’ve ever read. Definitely in my top 5 along with Good to Great, The Leadership Challenge, Visioneering and Crossing the Chasm. If you do anything in manufacturing, distribution, production, supply chain management or are trying to improve operations, READ THIS BOOK! You won’t regret it. It’s applicable the minute you finish it. And because of the way it’s written, you won’t forget the primary points of he book.